


Interlude - The Chains that Bind and Those that Break

by Moonfireflight



Series: The Abyssal Celebrant [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Amaurot, Angst, Ascians (Final Fantasy XIV), Flashback, Multi, POV Third Person, Shadowbringers Spoilers, lovingly hassling lahabrea in all possible timelines, post 5.0 suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:28:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25079131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonfireflight/pseuds/Moonfireflight
Summary: I planned on my next post for this series being the last, but there are a few other little scenes I had in mind that didn't fit in the finale.This short piece describes how Aira discovered the means to undo her perceived wrongs and try again.
Series: The Abyssal Celebrant [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601428
Kudos: 6





	Interlude - The Chains that Bind and Those that Break

_ This isn’t right _ .

The phrase rings through Aira’s mind as she looks past her ash-coated fingers. In the span of a blink, the silhouette of magnificent towers overlays this broken reality - like a flash of lightning illuminating the night. For the second time in history, the once beautiful city of Amaurot lies in ruins. In the midst of this charred and waterlogged wreckage stands the woman hailed as a hero by many and more two worlds over. 

And everything is wrong. 

She feels no satisfaction in having slain her fiercest foe yet. Even the stoic sense of duty that has pushed her forward when nothing else would, that knowledge that  _ only she _ is capable of such feats, so they say, isn’t enough to push her forward. This place keeps drawing her back with tantalizing hints at a distant past the star has forgotten. 

There is no life here for malms around, but she keeps her silence, continually tamping down the urge to scream. She wants to travel back to the Source and shake any ounze of knowledge she can from the scholars of Sharlayan, or Matoya herself. To climb to the deepest spires of the Anti Tower, find Hydaelyn’s heart, and… what? 

The presence that brought her out of obscurity and set her on this path. The voice that convinced her of a heroic destiny. Her revered Mother. 

A primal. 

And she had no way to tell if she’d been tempered by  _ it. _

_ Then force me to leave this place, if you have sway over my soul yet. Pull me out of the ashes again and set me right! _

Her face is now streaked with ash and filth as she wipes away hot tears that have come, unbidden, once more.  _ No. Stop crying, damn you. This isn’t the world you should be fighting for - There are people alive right now who need their hero! _ Even in her mind, the word carries all the grease and flimsiness of a farce. Murderer. Ender of legacies. What right does she have to consign immortal souls to oblivion? There’s so much she could have learned, so much she needs to know, like…

_ Who was I? _

Her knees sink again into the sodden ground, drenched robes offering no protection from the chill of this desolate land. Mud seeps out between her fingers as she blindly gropes for something to hold on to, some clue. When Emet-Selch had draped his illusion over this sea of bones and one tentative footstep took her from seabed to the past, only willpower kept her walking forward under the crushing pain of nostalgia that gripped her heart. And he  _ recognized  _ her. Hythlodaeus, illusion or not,  _ recognized _ her. Yet she doesn’t know herself. Stained fingers tangle in her hair as she pleads with her mind and soul to  _ remember _ . That was her promise to Emet-Selch. No. To  _ Hades _ . To remember his people, but also to remember herself _.  _

Surely the Scions are worried by now for this shard still teeters on the blink of oblivion. But heavy chains bind her to this ruin, and she wouldn’t cast them off if she could. 

Buried under twisted metal and scorched stone lies her center of gravity. It calls to her, louder now, enough to finally push her into trying again. So her hands press into the mud again, fighting against its sucking pull ever downward. 

As she’s done for bells now, she paws at the silt until the stone beneath is revealed. It is the same as all the rest, yet she can’t resist tracing the parallel lines of faded gold on its face. To her they feel like a blank sheet of music. The naked staff lines beg to be graced with notes. The orchestra stands ready to begin but none can recall the song. 

Eventually, it joins the growing pile to her left, discarded once more. She steels herself and ignores the faint whispers from each stone her fingers pass, closing her eyes to focus on that unknown beacon. There it is- 

_ Tick. _

_ Tock. _

That mechanical heartbeat calls to her, mirroring her own in metal and wood, so it sounds. It resonates in the hollow of her chest. She reaches deeper, past crags that scrape her arm and leave her skin burning and angry even in the cold. 

Her face mere ilms from the muck, she feels the mud beneath her fingertips seeming to pulse in time to the unseen clockwork.  _ Close… _ She brushes against something smooth, but just as quickly, it sinks beyond her tentative reach. 

_ No! _

Water and muck roar against her ear as she throws herself into the bog, the taste of it putrid against her lips. With fingers that threaten to lock up from hours of cold, tedious work, she feels around, aiming for somewhere below where she felt the object a moment ago.  _ There it is!  _ She can barely sense it’s pulsations, shivering and aching so, but her hand closes around its prize. 

_ TICK.  _

_ TOCK.  _

As the sound thrums through every nerve, she slips, twisted metal digging into her ribs and tearing out a half-drowned scream. But she doesn’t let go. Panting breaths hiss through gritted teeth as she fights the sucking mud and the thing in her hand catches on fragments of walkways, shards of once-grand buildings. She pushes aside the pain, the violent chattering of her teeth, the disorienting numbness creeping through her other arm,  _ tick, tock, none of it matters. Nothing in the world holds any meaning, tick, tock, there has to be another way.  _

With an anticlimactic splash of dirty water, her arm is free at last and she falls over on her back, clutching the filthy treasure to her chest, sucking in ragged breaths of icy air. Yalms above her, the ocean ripples silently, held at bay by Bismark’s spell. She gives herself to this place. The song of the beacon slows her heart and her breath follows the captured waves above. Her eyelids grow heavy as exhaustion takes the place of panic and pain, and the time between her long blinks grows shorter. 

“You said that more than once you’ve stayed up all night instead of most of it for fear of sleeping through the day, so I created her to awaken you at whatever time you wish.” 

His gaze remains firmly on the creation as it - she - flitters about in front of him, filling the room with a peaceful tinkling sound. “I have a device for that, you know. It is a rather well known concept.” 

“Yes, and it is  _ rather well known _ that you shattered your last one against the door of your study.” 

Brow furrowed, he turns his back on them both, arms crossed. She bites her tongue to stop herself from laughing at his petulance. Amusement quickly falls away and her heart stops as the little flying bell alights on The Speaker’s shoulder. She nuzzles into his blond hair, and her creator stands rigid, excuses ready to tumble from her lips. “I-I didn’t program it to…”

“It is an intriguing idea. An alarm that one must get out of bed to catch in order to silence it, yes?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“I accept your gift. Should it function as described, I shall pen you a letter of recommendation to take with you to the Bureau.”

Her little bell jingles happily, taking off from its new owner’s shoulder and whirling around his head. In turn, her creator felt like someone had popped the top off her head and filled her with champagne. “T-thank you, sir. I hadn’t planned on making it public, though.” 

Her heart stops and she wishes she could vanish into mist. Those careless words were nothing short of a confession. If he didn’t realize it already, in moments, he would understand the gravity of her statement. It was a gift - A creation she had labored over for hours, meant for him alone. She didn’t intend it to have such a personality, but it seems she had not tamped down her feelings as well as she’d intended when crafting the little dear. “Ah, but I will consider it! I must be off.” 

Just before she spins about to flee, he turns to her, glancing over his shoulder with the bell still clinging to him. Both wear a smile - one of wholehearted delight on the bell girl and a more restrained but no less pure smile peeks out from behind fangs of red. The fizzy feeling that filled her rushes to her head and 

She blinks, taking stock of her body as consciousness laboriously returns. The tingling in her arm has subsided, but with the loss of numbness comes pain from a hundred tiny scrapes and gouges. She blinks to clear the last vestiges of the dream or vision from her mind. Her head had been pounding for the previous two days between bouts of crying and stress, so the telltale ache of a sudden echo vision would have faded into the background but… that scene couldn’t have been real in any time or place. She knew that mask well, and no lessons of the past from Emet-Selch could make her believe that Lahabrea would ever have blushed like a schoolboy upon receiving such a silly gift. 

_ But wasn’t that the point of his soliloquies? To teach us that the Ascians, too, have loved and lost? _ Still… it was too ludicrous to reconcile. Ignoring the way her side protests, she sits up stiffly, still clutching the thing to her chest, not ready to look at it for fear that she might have imagined its call. It doesn’t feel like merely another broken chunk of Amaurot in her hands, but it had also grown quiet. 

With one last glance at the twisted, blackened ruins, she musters up the last of her energy and teleports back to her home on the Source. 

***

Waking up feels like crawling out of the same slog she had fought through yesterday. Her eyes feel caked shut still, even though she had forced herself to bathe before collapsing into bed. Vestiges of forgotten dreams cling to her, offering no explanation for the weight in her chest. Aira had hoped that her sojourn to the ruins would have lessened some of the burden, but it only seems to have added a new layer of unexplained duty to it. 

_ How can I fix this? There’s no way to undo the tragedy of twelve thousand years ago. I can’t even bring back the one Ascian who might have had some answers to offer and been willing to speak to me. _

A knife twists in her heart, and she curls in on herself in the bed, crying. Her tears are tinged with bitter frustration born from not knowing who or what she weeps for. Amaurot - a place that feels like home to her soul? Emet-Selch, who she hardly knew and could barely tolerate? The loss of the knowledge he could have imparted? None of it seems to fit or come close to filling the hole in her heart. 

_ Tick. _

_ Tock. _

Aira sits up in a rush, wiping her tears from her face with a sleeve. Her eyes burn, and her throat is tight like she might cry again, but she takes a few shaking breaths because she needs to  _ focus _ . There’s no putting this off for breakfast. 

At her desk now, she looks at the mud-caked thing. What she can see of it seems to be made of crystal and metal. If it survived where it had lain for centuries, then it could survive a bath. She fills a small wooden tub with water and sets it down on her desk, spilling some over the edge in her rush. With the beacon cradled in both hands, she lowers it into the water, rubbing her thumbs over the surface to coax the mud from it. The contents of the tub quickly become too murky to see into, but as she uncovers more of the object, the water begins to shine with a faint blue glow. 

Heart racing, she works quickly yet reverently until she can feel no more dirt clinging to it, and lifts it from the water at last. 

After everything she’s put herself through, she can’t help thinking that the item in her hands is perhaps underwhelming. It is a prism of exceptionally smooth crystal with metal caps on the ends. Intricate patterns shine just below its surface. It is beautiful, really, but what she wants is answers. 

“Speak to me then, my treasure. Why were you calling out to me?” 

Nothing. Maybe her work had washed the magic away somehow. Tension rolls over her shoulders and up her neck from the anger bubbling up within her. “Tell me, damn you!” she screams, shaking the thing even as she gathers up aether within herself. “Please!” Tears blur her vision as she channels her energies into the crystal with no direction beyond her fervent wish for answers. 

The light around her shifts and dims, and three shadows stand before her. No, not shadows -  _ Ascians…  _ but they are barely there, just shades of their former selves, perhaps. “Who…?” No, she looks at their masks and she knows them. Nabriales, the first Ascian consigned to oblivion by her hand. Igeyorhm, the next. Their presence she understands, but Lahabrea is there too. She wasn’t the one to land the killing blow… Then why? 

The gripping pain blooming in her chest doesn’t stop her from feeding the thing, which resumes its clockwork clarion.  _ Why?!  _ The vision before her wavers, then each Ascian, in turn, throws back their hoods. 

_ And she remembers.  _

Or perhaps she’s going mad from draining her mana well past where she should, but behind each mask,  _ she sees them. _

Nabriales with those lovely chocolate brown eyes so often sparkling with mirth and brilliant mischief. Igeyorhm, heart-wrenchingly beautiful in her intensity - how could she not have recognized those lips she once stole kisses from when she could? Then, Lahabrea… 

“No!” The crystal vibrates in her hands, and she can feel it waiting for a command she doesn’t know. But she knows she wants him back. Wants all of them back. “How… how do I fix this? Oh, gods, how do I fix this?! I didn’t know!” 

Lahabrea’s jaw clenches, his mouth forming a hard line. Aira tears her gaze away from him, but  _ gods _ , how could she have forgotten? The others look to each other for a moment in silent communication before Igeyorhm gestures emphatically at Nabriales. He nods and turns to the flagging woman in front of him, phantasmal hands reaching towards the crystal. He speaks in a musical language, the words tumbling gently over each other, just on the other side of a thin veil of understanding but… “Time magic?” The other two look over as well, and she can almost see their eyebrows arch in surprise. She continues, voice hoarse. “If this… spell can turn back time, then let me undo the damage I’ve wrought. I know it cannot undo the great calamity, or you would have done so, but I can at least do this. All of you…,” 

_ TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.  _

The world around her ripples in time with that insistent ticking. Though she can feel herself growing faint, she gathers every last dreg of her reserves and wills it into the  _ matrix _ in her hands. “Please, guide me. Don’t let me make the same mistakes again,” she begs them in a rough whisper. “ _ Please!” _ Angry slanted eyes glare at her from above sharp fangs, but 

_ TICK. _

Piercing eyes of light gold soften behind the mask, and the tension drains from his face, leaving him looking like a man who hasn’t slept in days. Alas, with him, that might be the case. And the name that she speaks is foreign to her lips but scribed within her soul, and he smiles, revealing age lines here and there, and minute wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. And she remembers those too - the slow change in the topography of his face after centuries of… 

All three Ascians… Ancients… dear companions, friends, lovers - hold their palms to the concept matrix in her hands and channel aether into it along with her. Even blended so, she can feel their individual signatures in the ebb and flow of it. 

_ TOCK. _

The room around her flickers out of existence, with nothing but a white void beyond. “I won’t forget you this time, I swear it!” Her scream is muffled and distorted as if coming from somewhere outside of her. “Guide me, and I will listen!” This time her voice is as a drop of water in a roaring ocean - tiny, but part of the whole, important beyond measure. 

And as the last of her senses fade, a familiar voice replies.

“Find me. Mnemosyne.” 

***

The carriage heaves, rousing Aira from her half-slumber. The long and tiresome journey had left her in a hazy torpor. She realizes her eyes are watering or…? Must just be the desert dust kicked up by antsy chocobos. 

Aira scrubs the dirt and such from her eyes so that she can see how close they are to Ul’dah. Beyond the dust and heat shimmer, the spires of the city are now clear over the horizon. “We’ll be there soon, lass.” The only other occupant of the carriage nods to her. “There’s a look ‘o determination in your eyes that makes a man wonder. What brings you to the jewel of the desert, if you don’t mind?” 

She smiles back at him. “Power. Nothing shy of the power to change the world.” 


End file.
